We have redirection, Houston

The stars are in alignment now.

1) The transfer to the Linux server worked, within hours, without a hitch.

Okay, there were three minutes of frigid horror. When I first invoked the index.html, the whole site was black. I mean nada, nothing but the favicon icon at the top. Okay, that means at least that part of the html file executed. What happened to my swf?

I do not know how the left field solution came to me so fast. I was just lucky that I’d been reading articles about jumping from Windows to Linux servers. In a forum, someone was asking about a broken script, and the reply was that “you never know with Linux, it could anything from a case sensitive file name to…” Somehow that little bit of information stuck in my head, and popped out at the right time.

I checked the file names in my index file, and lo, there was a subdirectory that has one uppercase letter. The directory name in my root was in all lowercase, so it wasn’t picking up the .js file. I just thank whatever inspiration brought me to zero in on that minute detail, but I changed the directory name, and bingo, it worked like a charm. Saved me a heap of headaches having to really figure that one out.

And no, there is no logical reason for filenames to be case sensitive in any OS, no matter how Linux lovers justify it. Variables named XYz should always equal variables named xYz. Computers may see it as different, but we are humans, not computers.

2) I was not able to do the redirect through the “content – Site Redirects” because I could not for the life of me tell what parameters they wanted. So I just created the .htaccess file, uploaded it to my root, et voila!

Useful site for redirection: http://www.javascriptkit.com/howto/htaccess.shtml

3) My preloader for my little swf files is working. The traced bytecount was wrong, and preloader graphic kept showing up when the actual movie was running. I deleted the preloader graphic from frame 2, but it also disappeared from frame 1. I fixed it with a little sledgehammering and addiition of a keyframe.

Three solutions in a row. I should retire while I’m ahead.

A few words on the Afrikaans training. How many months has it been now? Six, I think. I can write like a second grader, and read at the third grade level. I’m not trying too hard, but it’s become a daily habit to read, listen to or watch something in Afrikaans.

When reading Dieburger, I look up twenty words or more, which, oddly is an improvement over looking up every other word. I can easily understand articles written in a conversational tone.

The sounds and audio flow is no longer foreign to my ears. I can pick out individual words and look them up. I have to actively listen when hooked into Radio Sonder Grense. http://www.Rsg.co.za. Radio announcers are the easiest to understand because of their enunciation.

Writing long sentences is still hard, and the spoken, hopefully, will come when I catch onto the written.

To add another level of difficulty to my task, I’m at the beginning of learning spoken Russian through the Pimsleur method. Now, instead of English, I’m starting to substitute Afrikaans words, when I can’t remember the Russian words. If I get too confused I’ll just drop the Russian, to learn later.

I must be going through a mid-life language crisis — so many languages, so little time! [insert eyeroll here]

Moving? Invest in a 301

Nope, we ain’t talking retirement plans.

I have a basic HTML site with multiple pages. I am creating a flash site with just one page, the index.html, that executes a swf. The problem is multilayered.

1. How do I redirect visitors from one of my old HTML pages to the index.html page? In the good old days, it used to be a simple javascript redirect. But not anymore, apparently. Using the 301 permanent redirect is the proper way to go. It preserves page rankings.

The 301 comes in many flavors: PHP, ASP, etc. I can’t do any of these. The best I could attempt is making the .htaccess file (only on Linux). Which leads to my new dilemma. I am hosted on a Windows server on Godaddy. Cue ominous music.

2. When I signed up for Godaddy, they asked me a crucial question. If I’d taken the time then to study for the answer, I wouldn’t be in half the pickles I get myself into. Every time I hit a brick wall having to do with coding, the solution was qualified with “only if you’re on a Linux server.” At the time, Linux sounded foreign, and I thought my site needed to live on a server that matched the OS on my own computer. Nope, they don’t have to match. For my straight HTML site, the Linux server offers more flexibility.

Luckily, GoDaddy makes switching easy. After googling the solution, I just had to “upgrade/downgrade” plan, and select “Linux” instead of “Windows.” The change will effect in72 hours.

For a few teasing moments I considered switching domain hosts entirely, maybe try Hostmonster. But I’ll stick with Godaddy for now and see how I like Linux.

3.I have site statistics code on each of my html pages. What is the analogy in a swf file? How do I know if people are spending time ogling photos, watching the videos, or listening to the audio page of the website?

The answer to that is Google Analytics (one word?). There’s a component that I can use in the Actionscripts that dumps data to an html file. I’m still not sure if and how it works in AS2. Lots more reading required.